Multum in Parvo

(much in little)

For some while he has realized that things between him and the world are no longer proceeding as they used to; before, they seemed to expect something of each other, he and the world; now he no longer recalls what there was to expect, good or bad, or why this expectation kept him in a perpetually agitated, anxious state.

– Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino

1

Sometimes I wake up still thinking it’s a dream. After all these months I experience wonder and resistance. I dress in a dream. I eat in a daze. I wander room to room. Then I trot outside to pull a weed. Or deadhead a rose. Or thrust my face in the sun. Or smell the dirt. In the garden I get down on my knees to smell what is alive in the ground. Or gaze at the feeders where small creatures gather, oblivious to everything but the exigencies of bird life: seed and song. Was I ever that oblivious? Yes, of course.

Frank lives across the street. Originally from Sicily, he’s a widower in his eighties. We usually talk while we work in our gardens. Since his wife died, we’ve started to hug. He’s usually gregarious, but now he only waves, his hand rotating overhead. And he never wears a mask. Without Rosaria I know he’s unhappy. I wonder if he doesn’t care if he dies.

Next door are two little girls with a trampoline in the backyard where they bounce and squeal. It’s a big yard with room to run around plus a patio, a shed, a large patch of grass, four hens, and a magnificent chicken coop built by their father. I remember when the chicks arrived a year ago, so small they fit in my palm. Now they bustle around, their licorice and caramel-colored feathers glistening like waxed satin. The clucking, the bouncing, the squealing, the running are reassuring. Of what? Of the future instead of an incessant present.

And what about the incessant present? Living in the Now, isn’t that what the masters of transcendence instruct us to seek? Yet I’ve arrived unprepared. I try to meditate. Daily I try, but my brain is a cyclotron. It takes many minutes to quiet my thoughts, and the effort invariably makes me hungry. Meditation turns to thoughts of lunch and whether to make a sandwich or fry an egg.

On Sunday I sometimes see the girls’ masked grandparents in the garden. Sunday was once its own special day for church and family visits. I grew up in the Bible Belt where everything was closed. Almost no one worked on Sunday. At home it meant the New York Times (a sign of sophistication in the provinces), bagels and lox (another sign), and my parents’ violent arguments. As long as I could hide, I liked the day’s empty feeling of nothing to do. For some of us it has been month after month of Sunday: hours of amusing distractions and depressing thoughts.

I rarely leave the house. I have a condition that prevents me from mingling. However, I take a daily walk. Walking was first a liberation, wild and free. Then shifted to a yardstick that I calculated to ensure good health. Lately I put off the walk as long as possible, begrudgingly exchange my slippers for Adidas, and stumble out the door.

Depending on my energy, which I measure like a meter reader for water, oil, and gas, I choose from three routes that vary according to the number and severity of hills. Route 1 is mostly flat, its coordinates four major streets, none of which I have to cross. There is little traffic so I can walk on spongy asphalt instead of cement. But no matter how often I pass the same blocks, the same dozens of houses, the same parked cars and front yards, I find new things to see. Most of all, I wonder what lurks behind every door and drape. A question that has absorbed my entire life.

This is the neighborhood where I have lived for over two decades. A relief after moving every few years with nothing precious but kids and books. In fact, I’ve lived twice in this neighborhood. The first time in a nondescript apartment house modeled after Motel 6, as compact and efficient as a sailboat with two small bedrooms for three people, an ugly facade, and seasonal fleas.

Despite the drawbacks, I loved this apartment. My stucco pueblo. In addition to panoramic views of sky and bay, the landings were filled with potted plants, bikes, hibachis, and delectable aromas that floated from open doors. The neighbors were interesting and genial, plebs like me except the apartment manager. He was not a pleb. He drove a red MX-5 Miata and intended to retire in Paris. When he went about shirtless, showing off his titties and Riviera tan, the kids ogled his nipple rings. Sadly, we witnessed his young lover die of AIDS. While he was dying, I became friends with his mother and grandmother, both from somewhere remote and bearing the heavy stigma of the disease.

When I lived in this apartment, I too had a lover. A modest dwelling for a great passion. Under the circumstances we had to sneak around. Sometimes during lunch hour from my job in west Berkeley, we met there and made love. En route back to the office, I’d stop for an avocado sandwich on wheat toast, cheap and satisfying, to eat at my desk.

We also had Pierre, a parakeet, whose song filled the rooms. After the Loma Prieta earthquake, Pierre suffered from PTSD. He stopped singing. He stopped eating. He lay on the floor of his cage. I took him to the vet who diagnosed beak and feather disease. When he did not improve, I decided on a course of euthanasia inspired by the stories of the Inuit. We put Pierre in the freezer with a little food and handwritten prayers.

Then we moved across town into a brown-shingled cottage next to Ho Chi Minh Park. It and Provo Park in downtown were named for revolutionary thinkers and movements. Now the parks have ordinary names, but out of admiration for heroic ideals, I prefer the old ones. Like the clashes over monuments to white supremacy, names matter.

From Albert Camus, “To name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world.”

And Solzhenitsyn: “[T]he word is more sincere than concrete, so words are not trifles. Once noble people mobilize, their words will crush concrete.”

Lo and behold! I see you noble people mobilizing in the streets, crushing the fabrications of the past.

~~To be continued.